190 MEMOIR OF JOUN WILSON. 



a previous letter under the signature of " Icloloclastes," a strong 

 remonstrance had been addressed to Dr. Chalmers on his support 

 of the Edinburgh Review, in which, with great professions of re- 

 spect and admiration both for Chalmers and Jeffrey, there was 

 mingled a most offensive strain of rebuke on the subject of infidel 

 principles, which were alleged to be characteristic of the Review. 

 In the pretended letter to Professor Laugner, these charges were 

 repeated with still greater violence of language, and combined 

 w T ith the same professions of regret and esteem. The excellent 

 Professor of Natural Philosophy was broadly accused of having 

 turned his back on the faith which he once preached,* and allied 

 himself with a band of unprincipled wits and insidious infidels. 

 The author of both these letters was Mr. Lockhart, and they are 

 striking specimens of that unpleasant power which led his own 

 familiar friends to attribute to him, in their allegorical description, 

 the character of the Scorpion. For calm, concentrated sting it 

 would be hard to find six pages to match the Letter of the Baron 

 Lauerwinkel.f The very natural indignation excited by this attack 

 on one of the most amiable and eminent men of whom Edinburgh 

 could then boast, attained its climax in the publication of a pam- 

 phlet, called Hypocrisy unveiled and Calumny detected, in a Re- 

 view of Blackwood's Magazine. The author wielded a powerful 

 pen, and fixing on Wilson and Lockhart as the special objects of 

 his criticism, accused them both in very unvarnished terms of con- 

 duct disgraceful to men of letters and gentlemen. His own style, 

 indeed, was not the most choice, his elaborate periods being thickly 

 strewed with all the harshest epithets to be found in the dictionary. 



it is nevertheless true that this journal numbered among its supporters several clergymen of the 

 Lutheran Church. One of these was the late celebrated preacher, Hammerschlag (Dr. Chalmers 

 was here pointed at), another was Professor Laugner of the University of Konigsberg. The in- 

 dignation of the zealous and worthy Baron von Lauerwinkel was excited, 1 ' &c. 



* Professor Playfair was parish minister of Liff and Bervie from 1T73 to 1782. He became 

 assistant to Professor Ferguson in 17S5, and in 1S05 resigned the chair of Mathematics for that 

 of Natural Philosophy, which he occupied till his death, in 1819. 



t Much as these letters were to be condemned, however, it is but fair to observe that the ex- 

 ample had been shown on the other side. A voluminous and vehement writer, Calvinv.*. already 

 referred to, had inflicted not less than five pamphlets on the public, addressed to Dr. M'Crie and 

 Dr. Andrew Thomson on their sinful alliance with Blackwood's Magazine. In thundering sen- 

 tences, garnished with plentiful texts of Scripture, he calls upon them to "remember the fate of 

 that priest who associated himself with the infidel compilers of the Ehusyc&ope&ie? and hopes that 

 no priest in this country is willing to let it be supposed that he receives wages from a till that is 

 replenished by the dissemination of blasphemy. Similar remonstrances and insinuations were 

 very frequently levelled against Dr. Brewster; and there can be no doubt that such attacks were 

 calculated to provoke retaliation. 



